This work illuminates de Kooning’s practice for developing a painting from a preparatory drawing and exposes his notation system for charting large areas of color. The palette de Kooning used is twofold: his application of ready-made paints suggests an arbitrary selection of color but his mixed paints conjure associations to the natural world. Here, the flesh tone recalls de Kooning’s admiration of Rubens and oil paint’s capacity to capture the luminosity of human flesh.